# Rad Sign & NYRSF *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 30 Mar 1998* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### m.driussi *30 Mar 1998, 16:06* Reply: Item #0284733 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET03# Re: teratoid sign as radiation warning symbol. Good guess, vizcacha--my memory of possible radiation warning symbols puts them as the faded orange and black signs in the tunnels beneath the citadel (at the end of CITADEL when Severian is going through the tunnels with a light). But in the case I'm talking about, in the presence chamber of House Absolute, the teratoid signs are glyphs that (1) Jonas can read, and (2) they say (or suggest) planet Urth. "I know where we are . . . . on Urth," he answered . . . the folded panels . . . were set with clustered diamonds, as I now saw, and enameled with such twisted signs as had been on the door" (II, ch. 18). (Reminds me of THE STARS MY DESTINATION wherein each teleport location had a unique symbol to aid psionic teleportation.) "Diamonds and twisted signs" makes it sound more like Chaldean "angel writing" (based upon stars and constellations--here the "stars" being represented by diamonds rather than circles) and/or related sigils, like those of Olympian Spirits (given in the Lexicon). Or the glyphs could be true ideograms, written in red. Or they could be rad warn signs, and Jonas knows that the only planet in the seven galaxies to still cling to such devices is none other than Urth. Broderick's piece on PEACE in NYRSF, I liked it a lot and tried to tell many Wolfe readers about it when it first came out. Broderick should write more! (I forget--was "The Changeling" covered in the essay? If not there is room for more expansion.) =mantis= ---